Birthday Hike
Solo Tripping on Birthday!
How
do you celebrate your birthday? Partying with your friends? Going out with
family? Well, most of you agree with me and are nodding right now. Others, who
are staying away from their loved ones, are reading this with a poker face ON.
I was in the latter one this year, so I decided why not take an off from work
and just go out on a solo trip. Getting goosebumps already with “Solo trip”?
The first Solo trip is always scary and challenging. You have to plan
everything on your own and you can’t put the blame on anyone else (I know
right? :P). But once you get a hang of it, then the fun starts. This wasn’t my
first Solo trip so the fun quotient was on the higher side. Last year I did
Bungee jumping on my Birthday but that story is for another day. Right now
let’s focus on this one.
The
best part about Solo trips for me is full control to you.
You
want to eat something? Go ahead.
You
want to skip places and go somewhere else? Why not?
Second
best part is meeting strangers. When you’re on a trip, you can forget about the
routine things, your job and just have a random conversation with someone. Be
it the tapri wale bhaiya or the bus conductor or just some fellow traveler. It
happens to me often that I have a long conversation with someone without even
knowing their name and it clicks me in the end to catch their name.
So
when someone asks how I travel solo? I don’t. I always find someone or the
other on the way. Sometimes while
trekking I get accompanied by a dog as well. If you’re still skeptical about
going on a Solo trip, don’t be. Life is all about taking risks and adventures
and if you’re not taking risks then what are you doing? Don’t think right now,
finish reading this first.
So,
finally after trying to motivate you a little, let’s start with my hike now.
The day arrived and I woke up early to give myself a head start. I’m staying in
Dehradun right now so waking up to the hills view and Mussoorie lights at night
are pretty normal for me. I started travelling and within 3 hours I reached my
destination. Within those 3 hours, I got some calls for birthday wishes and had
to go ahead with the small talk which I usually avoid. Usually when you arrive
at your base point, you don’t expect a beautiful view. But when I arrived at
this place, right in front of me was something that words could not do justice
to, so you can see for yourself below. This motivated me even more to start the
hike.
After
having the tapri wali chai, I started my hike. If you’ve been to Vaishnodevi temple
then you’ll be familiar with the steepness. For those who haven’t, it was a
pretty steep hike. The distance wasn’t much but due to the steepness I was
stopping after every 5-10 minutes to catch a breath. I was using these small
breaks to click pictures as well, which I’m glad I did because on my way down
the breathtaking view was replaced with clouds everywhere. Slowly and steadily
I reached the middle point where I asked a girl to click a picture of me with
the view. Very few people were hiking that day. After getting 5-6 bad shots we
managed to get an average shot. After that I called it quits.
That’s
when I started the hike again. This time I got accompanied by her and we
started talking. (See! You always find company!) The first question is always “Are
you also traveling Solo?” Sadly she was traveling with her father. The more
saddening part was that he had done more treks than me. Skipping that part, we
started walking and covered the rest of the distance in another hour. The
mighty Surkanda Devi temple was in front of us and it came with a 360 degree
breathtaking view. The beautiful snowcapped peaks on one side and lush green
trees on the other were just too good to miss.
After 20 odd minutes the sun
shining on our head was replaced with clouds and the magnificent view vanished.
A little away from the temple was a point where we could get some pictures with
a different view, so we went to explore that place. The minute we reached that
point, clouds came out of nowhere and there we were, standing with a poker
face. Even in September the winds were cold enough to give you chills. That’s
when we started walking back to the temple. It felt like the hike was worth the
view and now we had to climb back down to the base point. Coming down was on
the easier side and took us less time. Within an hour we were back to our
starting point. And sadly it was time to go back to the boring routine life.
One
good thing which I noticed during this hike was that there were benches
everywhere to sit and relax and also dustbins so that you don’t litter around.
We often see people travelling in the hills littering here and there without
much care about the nature. So this was a good initiative to reduce the litter.
We should all be a little more active about this (Just a Thought).
With
this I came back to Dehradun and that’s how my Birthday ended with beautiful
pictures and memories in my head.
Do
share your feedback in the comments section, how I can further improve my blog.
And
my Instagram handle at: https://www.instagram.com/emmtravelicious
Comments
Post a Comment